My wife is more into comedy, but yeah suggesting women just go for George Cloony is not the best comment ;)

For me the generic race mix in Avatar actually lessens immersion for me. It would be more interesting as a unique vastly different alien species. Enemy mine did that part far better without having to resort to appealing looking blue humans. But it's not so much the generic design of the Aliens, it's more the 1 dimensionality of the human side that drags it down. Starship troopers emphasizes that part and takes it to satire which makes the movie. The alien bugs suit that purpose too, you're not supposed to empathize with them. Morals don't depend on how cute the other side looks.

Anyway to get a little back on topic. Storylines in movies definitely have hit diminishing returns. Games don't seem to fare much better. Graphics however still have the power to dress up the same old in new interesting ways.

For me the more realism in games the better. That doesn't mean it has to look like the real world, it means it has to behave realistically. Our brains are hardwired to process vast amounts of information on a concious and subconscious level. Light, sound, movement all add to immersion. Things behaving like you expect them to behave makes a game better imo.
Ofcourse unrealistic games are still fun. But eye candy is always nice to have. Why else spend all that money on making toy story 3 look so much better than toy story 1. Surely that engine was good enough to tell the story.

You still don't seem to understand the point, which is simply that animation, physics and lighting is far behind resolution and polygon count.

I can definitely understand your criticisms of Avatar come from intellectually.  I feel similarly in some cases.   From a mainstream appeal I don't think those desing choices would be as appealing even if they might gratify me a bit more and add some depth and complexity.  

I don't disagree with that statement at all.  

Surely the Toy Story 1 engine was good enough. The only reason Toy Story 3 looked much better is the advancements they had made to accomodate their artistic vision for other titles since then.  It wasn't a large extra cost incurred cost. 

I just think when large amounts are spent it especially needs to by parties whom can make a return on that investment.  I tend to view that as those persons making middleware and engines because those features are something that sells middleware solutions and engines.  If costs were reinvested as fluidly as you might see for R&D for say Pixar or the more communicative developers I wouldn't see much of an issue if any.

FF12 is the reason i didn't get the ps3 day one and waited for the slim model.

But don't forget the short memory syndrome =o

It's not like I have a true problem with any of those. It's just that money spent on them isn't money being spent on things that consumers are more likely to notice.

Physics in particular is very demanding and for the purpose of most games realism in physics isn't even what is wanted.  That raises costs for the hardware to even run this game.  We can combine many existing things and approximate well enough in most cases. Let Box 2D, NVidia PhysX, Havoc and all those people take the financial dive and license. 

Come on, you can't be serious. Toy story 1 budget 30 million, Toy story 3 200 million dollar budget.
But yes Pixar knows it can make the money back and use the software on the next project. Same for developers. Better graphics engine doesn't mean more work over all. The less the artists have to focus on making everything fit within scene budget constraints, the more freedom they have to recreate their vision. As we go forward the concerns of can all that be rendered on screen becomes less important. Still a long way to go before artistic freedom without technical constraints is reached in games.

I'd say it's like this (based on human perception, of course):

PS2-QQQQQQQQ------------------------------------
PS3--------------QQQQQQQQQQ-------------------
PS4------------------QQQQQQQQQq---------------

That is ridiculous.  It certainly doesn't look as if R&D saved them any resources to create their next products with budgets tripling to TS2 and then doubling again to TS3. In terms of investment vs profit that looks like diminishing returns.  Having almost been bankrupt so many times I thought they were better at this.  If costs continue to rise and revenue not substantially I cant encourage that as a sustainable business model even if it makes for great entertainment because it means eventually the profits don't cover new ventures let alone familiar retreads. 

It's also not working in the games industry either and putting many studios in a similar awkward position of not being able to make a next title.  Not everyone has GTA and they can't spend money like they do. That only works with subsidies and no one is willing to subsidize forever without adequate return.  

If working without technical constraints so that people can fulfill their artistic vision and have complete freedom is the concern then of course you will never have a profitable business. If it's art or business I chose business every time without hesitation.  

Diminishing returns are very true for throwing more money at a problem, but they're spending that much money to stay ahead of the competition, ahead of the curve. And it paid off as Toy Story 3 did over 400 million gross at the US box office alone. Add in foreign box office, blue ray sales, tie in game sales and other merchandise.

ps3 and 360 did the same thing in 2005, expensive systems sold at a loss to get ahead of the curve. With ps4 and x1 we see an adjustment back to the normal rate of progression. 360 and ps3 were the exception, and make it seem as if we're already hitting diminishing returns in the graphics department. However Moore's law is still active. Exponential growth in computational power is still continuing, and we'll find other ways when chips can't be shrunk anymore.

I don't mind Pixar throwing huge amounts of money into R&D, demand creates productivity. Somebody got to buy all these super computers for the tech to trickle down to consumer level later. You might think it's not the best thing financially to be an early adopter, but without them progress would be a lot slower.

For games, same thing. Bigger budget, more attention, more people buy your product over the competition. It's a shame when more money is spent on advertising than making the game. $200 million spent on advertising CoD and Battlefield. Now that's a waste.

And which games would you say are better than the sony ps4 offeriings? Your graph indicates that roughly 90% of ps360 games look better than ps4 games